


Items May Have Shifted During Transport

by thingswithwings



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ancient Technology, Crack, M/M, stuck in an elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-16
Updated: 2006-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:17:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rodney do not get stuck in an elevator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Items May Have Shifted During Transport

  
It began innocently enough, with what was assumed to be a minor system glitch. John and Lorne were coming back from a remote section of the city where they stored some of the less-vital but more space-consuming military supplies. General O’Neill had sent them a piecemeal tank on the _Daedalus_ along with a note that said “just in case,” and while John still couldn’t think of a use for it, it was nonetheless very cool.

Lorne was on the same rant he’d been on all day. “I just don’t see the point in having emergency supplies that might not be accessible in the case of an emergency. What if the transporters went down?”

John nodded thoughtfully as he pushed the transporter button to take them back to the control room. As he did so, there was a bizarre whirring noise, then utter silence as the transporter powered down and plunged them into total darkness. John sighed loudly. Lorne coughed.

“Just so you’re aware, Major, this is entirely your fault for saying that.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”

There was a long pause before Lorne spoke again.

“Maybe we’re stuck between floors.”

John opened his mouth to say that it was a _transporter_ , a very hip and cool _alien space transporter_ , which meant that they were not in any way _stuck between floors_ , but stopped himself. It was also Atlantis, and Atlantis got weird sometimes.

John tried squinting into the darkness, but still couldn’t see a thing. “Is there some sort of emergency call button? A little red phone?”

Lorne made a little noise that was almost like a laugh. “I can’t see to tell you, sir.”

John concentrated very hard, and although the doors didn’t open again, the lights did come up a bit. He could see Lorne’s face half-illuminated on the other side of the transporter.

Lorne gave the little room a cursory once-over. “Definitely reporting no little red phone, sir.”

“Thanks, Major.”

“No problem, sir.”

“I’ll radio McKay.”

By the time that Rodney stopped whatever he was doing long enough to analyse the problem (“Colonel, I cannot just come at your beck and call whenever you misuse the Ancient technology”), and by the time he figured out a way to manually override the transporter’s control system (“Hold your horses in there, you want me to accidentally dematerialize you with this thing?”) it was half an hour later.

They assumed it was a glitch, right up until it started happening to everyone.

Teyla and Ronon were the next victims, calling Rodney up about three hours after he’d sprung Sheppard and Lorne. Then it started to snowball: with several different transporter sites in constant use, it seemed that all of a sudden there were people trapped all over the city. Simpson got stuck with Tamaguchi out by the eastern pier, Chuck and Elizabeth were held in the one near the control room, and Kavanaugh got stuck with Parrish on their way back from the botany labs.

After a while, they figured out that the transporters would automatically unlock after about forty minutes, so Rodney made a command decision to stop getting people out of the transporters and started running system diagnostics instead. Unfortunately, this process involved trial-and-error use of the transporters in order to determine the cause of the problem, and led to Rodney getting stuck concurrently with Radek, Miko, and Johnson-the-new-guy-from-SG-9. Each time, he spent his forty minute waiting period sitting cross-legged on the floor of the transporter and scowling at his tablet computer.

The problem was that the transporters didn’t malfunction every single time. Rodney dragged John into one at one point, wanting to try something involving the mental component of the Ancient technology, but couldn’t get the glitch to reappear. For them, the transporter doors just opened neatly on the requested destination each time that they tried it.

“It’s like the Sirius Cybernetics Company for you around here, isn’t it,” Rodney grumbled at John as the transporter doors slid open without fuss for the eighth time. “It’s a pleasure to open for you and a delight to close again with the satisfaction of a job well done.”

“Hey, I was stuck with Lorne for half an hour while you ate a sandwich or something. I’m not immune, here.”

Rodney snorted and looked back at the tablet in his hand. “Well, I’ve got enough raw data for now – I’m going to go cross-reference this with the Ancient database and see what comes up.”

John nodded and took the stairs back to the control room.

\--

Two days later, everyone was tired of taking the stairs or, worse, hiking out to the remote parts of Atlantis to get to key equipment. Lorne went around with an I-told-you-so look on his face that was only slightly dampened by the fact that his living quarters were in the top part of the east tower, which annoyed John to no end. After hauling yet another box of – apparently – immediately necessary scientific equipment from the north pier down to the botany labs, John was more than ready to go back to the easy life.

So it was, at first, a great relief when Rodney burst into the senior staff meeting with his eureka face on.

“Okay, so we’ve got the transporters fixed!” he crowed. “It turns out that it was part of – get this – a compatibility subroutine that uses the personal databases to match personnel.”

Everyone at the meeting made the move from puzzled to slightly incredulous to embarrassed.

“Rodney, you’re saying this is some sort of...Ancient dating service?” Elizabeth looked like she was trying not to laugh.

Rodney nodded vigorously. “I figured it out when I realised that the glitch never showed up when someone was in the transporter by themselves. Or, thank god, in groups of three or more. So then I took a coffee break and made a chart of all the people it’d locked in together, and it turns out that it mostly paired scientists with scientists and military with military and so on, which is going to trigger some great awkwardness I am sure. Anyway, uh, yeah, dating service. It matches people by lifestyle and sticks them in a freaking elevator. It’s like romance by creepy cyborg sitcom writer.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Oh those wacky Ancients,” she drawled, low and amused.

Rodney nodded vigorously. “I think it’s normally supposed to happen when people enter themselves intentionally into the database for that purpose? Along with vital stats that can match them up better? But when it switched on, it didn’t have anyone left in the database, so just...took everyone. It’s actually quite fascinating – ”

John’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table and he interrupted, speaking over Rodney. “Okay, so, if it’s turned off or whatever, can we stop talking about it and get back to the actual meeting?” It came out harsher than he intended, and both Rodney and Elizabeth looked momentarily taken aback.

Then Rodney shrugged. “I turned it off. It’s fine to use the transporters now.”

“Alright, then,” Elizabeth began, “let’s talk about the next offworld mission.”

John talked about the next offworld mission.

\--

Later, John was hanging out in his quarters, eating leftover mashed potatoes and watching the latest episodes of _The Family Guy_ that he’d had smuggled on the _Daedalus_ when his door buzzed.

It was Rodney.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

John smiled and stood aside, waving Rodney into his quarters.

“Hi!” Rodney began, “you are so totally mad that the Ancient OKCupid didn’t put us together.”

John refused to gape. “What? I am not!”

“Oh, you are so.”

There were days when John felt like an escapee from a Monty Python skit. He put on his most calm, serious, casually-in-command face. “Rodney, I am not mad that the Ancient OKCupid didn’t put us together.”

“You are completely mad about it.” Rodney grinned. “We’ve got this little thing, and you’re all emo-teenager, so you’re mad because Atlantis didn’t tell us we were soulmates by locking us in a dark room for forty minutes, which by the way, I don’t want to cast doubt on the wise and venerable Ancients or anything, but that is a seriously fucked up way to get people to make out.”

John bit the side of his cheek in frustration. “Rodney, we agreed that this is just...whatever it is, it’s fine, I’m not in the market for – ” John stopped talking as Rodney walked calmly into his personal space and nudged him back against a wall.

“You are such a dork,” Rodney said fondly. “I mean, seriously, you’re a complete dork. Atlantis was matching people up by how often they visited the gym and when they took their lunch breaks and what labs they frequented. It doesn’t know that you’re not just some dumb grunt and that you secretly laugh on the inside when I make a Douglas Adams joke. It locked me up with Radek, and Miko, and Johnson, the new guy from SG-9, and let me assure you that I am completely out of his league.”

Rodney was pressed against him completely now, pinning him, braced with his forearms against the wall on either side of John’s head. Rodney’s gaze kept slipping down to John’s mouth as he talked.

“I do not laugh on the inside at your Douglas Adams jokes,” John spoke quietly, finding his breath a little short.

“You do so.”

“Your Douglas Adams jokes are lame and usually at my expense, so – ” Rodney cut him off again, this time by pressing their mouths together, kissing John with familiar patience and vehemence, swallowing up his objections. John gave up the fight and kissed him back, rubbing his tongue slowly against Rodney’s, drawing a little moan from the back of his throat.

When they broke apart again, it was slowly, lips clinging to each other, and they didn’t pull back far.

“I wouldn’t have minded, though,” John said, running his hands up under Rodney’s shirt, pressing his palms to the cool skin there.

“Minded?” Rodney seemed to have lost track of their earlier conversation, his eyes and then his mouth fixating on John’s collarbone, sucking on it with great care and precision, every little bite seeming to last forever. Rodney’s body felt heavy and good, draped over him like this, and John almost lost his train of thought, too.

Then he remembered, and couldn’t stop it before it came out of his mouth. “If someone else had known. Besides you. Or, or us. It would’ve been nice, for once. To have outside confirmation.”

Rodney had drawn back and was looking him in the eye, a bit flustered. “Oh. Well.” John ducked his head for a moment, then started moving his hands again below Rodney’s shirt, finding his nipples, bringing his head down to reclaim Rodney’s mouth.

They made out like that, against the wall, for a long time, hands moving restlessly, all lips and teeth and tongue and hot breath and the delicious slide of their clothed thighs moving together. Eventually, John braced his hands against Rodney’s chest, fanning his fingers out to span it, and pushed him slightly away, aiming him toward the bed.

\--

Later, when John was inside him, covering Rodney’s body completely, Rodney reached back and, finding John’s hand, gripped it in his own.

“Me – me too,” Rodney gasped, out of breath. “I would’ve liked it too.”

“Yeah?” John moved, just a bit, looking for the right angle. Rodney groaned, low and deep and stuttering, which meant he’d found it.

“Yeah, there, fuck me like that, god. Uh.” Rodney paused, shoved back on John a little, and spoke again. “Yeah. I would’ve liked it. I would’ve – oh, jesus – I would’ve fucked you in the transporter.”

John’s mind almost whites out with that image, and he bites down on his lip to keep himself from coming. Rodney’s ass clenched around him, which didn’t help, but god it felt amazing. “Yeah? Right there where anyone could find us?”

Rodney grunted, then shifted to brace himself more solidly on his hands and left knee. Then he pushed back again onto John’s cock. There wasn’t much of a rhythm yet, just sloppy fucking that felt way too good for what it was. “I’d have just flipped you over and gotten your pants out of the way and just taken, oh!” John pulled out and rammed back in again, “oh, yes, just taken your ass right there on the floor, just shoved into you, just like this, oh god john don’t stop – ”

John didn’t, pulling back and in again, building a rhythm now, finally, sliding in and out of Rodney with that delicious friction-feeling meeting him on every stroke, with Rodney biting off obscenities, working himself on John’s cock, pushy and desperate. John slid a hand from Rodney’s stomach down to his cock, gripping and stroking, his hand damp with sweat. It didn’t take long, with Rodney on the edge like that, and John followed after him, pouring himself out into Rodney, his eyes stuttering closed as he came.

After, he found Rodney’s hand again and held on.

\--

Two weeks later, they were walking to the firing range, Rodney was making Douglas Adams jokes again, and suddenly the transporter they were in stopped working. John coughed.

“Rodney?”

Even in the dark, he knew that Rodney was grinning like a maniac. “Hm! Now, how on earth could that have happened?” Rodney muttered, as if to himself, and clucked his tongue.

John rolled his eyes. “Must be a glitch.”

“Of course you’re right, Colonel.” If John could only get those words on tape.

“I guess we’ll just have to entertain ourselves until it’s fixed,” John supplied.

Then he felt Rodney’s smile up close, pressed against his own, laughing a little as he kissed John.

“Seriously, such a dork,” Rodney said again, but then John shut him up.


End file.
